"It Lives Inside" director on his psychological monster and "counterintuitive" approach to suspense

Director Bishal Dutta makes an auspicious feature film debut with his effective folk horror shocker, "It Lives Inside." After an eerie prologue, the film introduces Samidha, Americanized as "Sam" ("Never Have I Ever" actress Megan Suri), a teenager who is uninterested in helping her mother, Poorna (Neeru Bajwa) prepare for an upcoming Puja ceremony to celebrate the mythological god Durga defeating a demon. 

Sam is a good student, and her teacher Joyce (Betty Gabriel) asks her about Tamira (Mohana Krishnan), her classmate who has become withdrawn of late, clutching a glass jar and acting strangely. When Tamira explains to Sam that the jar contains a monster — later explained to be the Pishach, "a flesh-eating devourer of souls" — Sam causes the vessel to break, and the demon is unleashed.

Then Tamira disappears, uncanny things happen to Sam's boyfriend, Russ (Gage Marsh), as well as Joyce and Sam's dad, Inesh (Vik Sahay). Sam realizes that she has to contain the Pishach to restore order — and she cannot do it alone. 

Dutta portrays this battle of good versus evil well, with several disturbing scenes, while also commenting on cultural assimilation. The filmmaker spoke with Salon about his new film during the Black Star Film Festival in Philadelphia last month.

What inspired "It Lives Inside"? Have you had to battle demons trapped in jars that feed on raw meat? 

Not exactly. [Laughs]. My grandfather, when he was a young man in India, said he dealt with a supernatural entity. I grew up hearing that ghost story, so I started to wonder: what could that have been? I knew I wanted to do a horror story for my first film, I love the genre, I thought: what can I do that is unique? I thought of that story, and the idea of the creature, the Pishach. The other piece of it was that I really wanted to do a film about assimilating into American culture as an Indian American teenager. 

I was struck by an early scene where Poorna admonishes Sam for whistling, claiming that it signals evil spirits. Can you talk about some of the folk horror elements in your film? 

I did not grow up superstitious, but I grew up loving horror films. But if you love horror, you think, how real is this stuff? The best is when it feels real, and the audience can engage with it as if it was not fantasy, but something we are going to deal with walking home at night. The superstitions in the film come from family members, and the older generation, and things I grew up rejecting in favor of modernity. But in putting this film together, I thought, we have this well of superstitions, let me draw from that; they have such a wide cultural reach. 

Can you talk about creating the cultural tension in the film? Sam and her mother have different emotions about tradition and modernity, and Sam and Tamira have grown apart as friends. The film generates themes of guilt, shame and loneliness that feed the characters' fears. You talk about horror being grounded in reality. It is really powerful.

A lot of this came from a certain tension where it feels to be an American as an immigrant. You have to perform American-ness to a degree that [non-immigrant] Americans don't. There is the good immigrant/bad immigrant fallacy. What does it mean to be the right kind of immigrant in this country, and what does it mean to be the wrong kind and these internalized ideas? I started with Sam as this character who is trapped between both worlds. She has a very relatable and universal desire to fit in, but high school conflicts with that. That is the central tension; there is a line in the film where she says, "Everything I want outside of me is inside me and I can't get it out." There are a lot of things Sam can change, but there are a lot of things that, when people look at her, she can't change, no matter how much makeup she puts on, or the clothes she puts on or the music she listens to. 

What made you decide to make the film about a teenager? They feel the most and are so self-aware. Sam's anxiety is fear-based, and not focused on dating or fitting in.

I wanted to privilege and respect the high school point of view, because so often, that point of view is undercut, and treated as "little" and lacking in substance. I did not want to devalue her by making her boy crazy, or about her clothes or the phone. She's a complex human struggling with things. 

It Lives Inside (Neon)

Can you talk about your visual approach to the material? There are many scenes that are disorienting, where you move the camera, or use shadows, lighting or spaces (like a locker). The tone and feel of the film is both modern and traditional, realistic and fantastical. We experience it as the characters do in this space.

I have to credit that to my cinematographer, Matt Lynn. We talked about how to translate the themes of claustrophobia and loneliness into visuals. There are a lot of close-ups in the film, which is very much by design. The horror of it, before the demon enters the picture, is that Sam is living under a gaze. Matt and I wanted to put the camera so close to the characters that the audience understands the camera is an oppressive force. 

The balance of real and fantastical — I find myself drawn to both sides. I can never pick, because part of me wants to make documentaries and just capture people in an unobtrusive way and pull at the interiority of the characters. But I also want to bring comic books to life, not in the superhero sense, but the graphic nature of panels. Stylistically that was interesting to Matt and I, and we tried to create the balance to keep the audience between these two worlds. 

What about presenting the horror elements in "It Lives Inside"? The suspense comes because many of the intense moments come unexpectedly. It is as if you are building the tension but strike while viewers are preparing for the shock. Can you talk about these scenes as well as how much violence to show? 

For me, suspense is a conversation with the audience. Imagining a full theater and what are they thinking and feeling? When do they expect the scare to come? They know the genre. The way we engage with film — you can call it suspension of disbelief, but it is something deeper. Audiences who go to horror films for these moments. It's what Steven Soderbergh said about "Trojan Horse" cinema. You bring the audience in with something, you deliver on that, and then you can give them something more. When I design the horror pieces, I think how long can I prolong this? The audience knows the scares are coming. It is gratifying when people start laughing. It seems counterintuitive, but we are withholding and then delivering that scare when viewers least expect it. 

That's what made Hitchcock's "Psycho" so terrifying, because a character is killed before you expect it. He's coming up the stairs and you anticipate him going into the room, but he's murdered before he even gets there. 

Did you ever hear the story that that scene was shot when Hitchcock was sick and the crew shot it for him, and Hitchcock said, "You did a great job, but you shot the scene as if he's the killer, not the victim." And that sticks with me. Hitchcock had the greatest understanding of point of view in cinema. He uses the camera for point of view, and I think of point of view more than anything. That meld between audience and protagonist when you have a well-written character. It becomes so much more intuitive to manipulate the audience and deliver what they are here for.

But I never felt manipulated watching "It Lives Inside." It didn't feel derivative.

I really appreciate the element of homage and reference in this film. I grew up loving horror films. It meant so much to me to get to do a horror film as my first feature. I didn't want to do it as parody or pastiche or deconstruction. That wasn't interesting. I was affected by the big screen experiences when I was 13 and 14. The film that set me off was the first "Conjuring." It was a brilliant gateway movie. Horror films felt dangerous. Can you stomach it? The recent "Talk to Me" is phenomenal. I'm stuck on how well it manipulates its audience. In terms of raw effect, the sound design is great, but it is the screenplay that subverts expectations and makes you feel like you are having fun then it punches you in the face. 

There is a scene where Sam and Russ enter an abandoned house and decide not to go into the basement (because of a crime that occurred there). If you come across a murder house, would you go in and investigate? Why or why not?

Absolutely not. I definitely was a curious teenager, and I wrote that scene because my friends and I used to do those things. We did find an abandoned community center with a bunch of needles and crazy writing on the wall. That was so formative for me. I had stories in my mind of what went on there. It was so eerie to be there. But the curiosity pulled me there.

By why wouldn't you go in the basement, then?

I wouldn't now. I'm too afraid of scary things happening. But in the film, it was returning to the mind of a teenager. They would go in the house, but they are smart enough not to go into the basement. There is a magic trick to getting the audience to buy into a horror film. The biggest part is that you convince the audience that "I would have done the same thing, and I would have died." They hunt for moments where they can disengage when characters act stupid. We thought let's not lose the audience. It's scarier if you feel you would make those same decisions.

What can you say about creating the food for the film? The food and traditions serve a real purpose but may be unfamiliar to American audiences and by that, I mean, white people. Can you discuss that?

When we were putting together the aesthetic of the food in the film, one of my goals would that Indian restaurant sales would shoot up. It's a part of our culture that is so important and rich. I wanted to make it a narrative point and part of the narrative. In high school, I rejected my mom's food to eat at Chipotle. There is a fear of the smell [of Indian food]. I had anxiety, that people would smell it on me. I realized how special it was for my mom and I to cook together. The food in the film is the ultimate symbol of cultural unity. Making the food together and presenting it and having this widespread feast. That comes back to this idea of connecting. 

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Lastly, can you talk about showing the Pishach? You do present this monster after hinting at it through most of the film. What informed the decision to show the Pishach?

I grew up loving movies like "Jaws" and "Alien." That's the stock answer, I guess. But there is something psychological about it. At the end of the day, I don't want audiences engaging with this film as spectacle; it's suspense. The more that I can pull the monster to the back section of the film, the more they are wondering what is that? It's hiding in the dark. It's invisible. It's hiding behind a shower curtain at one point. The audience can project their deepest fears into it when they don't know what it is. When you show it, it is that monster, but until you show it, it's your monster. 

"It Lives Inside" opens theatrically nationwide Sept. 22.